PRESIDENCY, NOT FOR A WOMAN

 

On January 14, 2021, at the inauguration Skyway Stage 3. President Rodrigo Duterte stated that the presidency is not for a woman. In the context that her daughter, Mayor Inday Sara Duterte, might run as President on the 2022 Presidential Elections, which is only a year away from now. Many reacted that it is sexist, and not necessarily true. But is it?

Historically speaking locally, locally meaning Philippines, how was the leadership of the woman that became Presidents, Corazon Aquino, and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo? The First Aquino Presidency, reversed and stopped all programs of the Marcos Administration, even if it is for the better. Privatized government controlled or owned companies, while the trend in the world at the time, was to nationalize. Deregulate price controls, now companies hike prices at will. And Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, although credited for economic gains, was a corruption ridden administration, that she has reach a negative ratings at the end of her term. And that’s how women had performed at the helm of power in Malacanang.

But was the President talking generally? If that is the case, he is wrong. Many woman leaders around the world, past and present, had led their countries well.

I interpret this in two ways. As the most literal explanation. He is only talking about his daughter only. Discouraging her to run on the highest post on the land. Which is maybe a reverse psychology. Remember when the now sitting President run for it. He vehemently deny until the filing of candidacy, that he wont run for President. Yet he is now our President. He is using strategy, although it’s now too late, because it’s too obvious now that her daughter will run. He is trying to deny that she will run, so that her supporters might support her more.

Another way of interpreting is, he is quipping the Vice President  Leni Robredo, that the job is not for her. Which I believed so, not because she is a woman, but she is just not fit and capable, to do intelligent decisions. And like the Liberal Party always does, with her becoming President, they might overturn government projects, that are maybe for the good. Just like the flood control program in NCR. Aquino, the son stopped it, because Arroyo started it.

And just look how she responded on the recent typhoon victims in 2020. Their houses are destroyed, by the typhoon, because they are made of light materials, yet you will give them light materials, to be destroyed again by other typhoons in the future. Which I believe is a practice in idiocy and stupidity.

If Sara won’t run, and Leni will. I will vote for other candidates. It’s not common sense to put her at the highest office of the land. You may say, the Duterte are lacking in the pandemic response. Both in Davao and on the national level. Everyone is lacking in response to the pandemic. Another name that is ringing the bell, when we talk about national politics, Isko Moreno, who has good programs, in the case of the pandemic, allowed the Traslacion to happened, even if they could be a spike of new cases because of that. Everyone is lacking. Because this pandemic is new, and still developing.

I believe that he is not talking generally, but only talking to those two people.